- Lily Jang became a real estate agent in 2017 after working primarily as a news anchor.
- She got into real estate because she had bad experiences with agents and wanted flexible hours.
- To stand out among its customers, it offers promotion on social networks, home staging and TV placement.
Before being a successful realtor closing nearly $28 million in deals in 2022, Lily Jang was a news anchor for KHOU-TV in Houston.
She would never have left the broadcasting world, she told Insider, if the broadcaster hadn’t suffered a change in management and subsequent layoffs.
“You always know in the back of your head that this could happen: New management is coming, and they’re going to clean up, and you could be a victim – and that’s exactly what happened to me,” he said. she declared.
The move was particularly difficult for her as one of the main reasons she moved to Houston was to care for her aging parents, especially her father, who has Parkinson’s disease. Unlike other broadcasters who could pick up and move to another city for a job, Jang had to stay and take care of his family.
“It was the most devastating time of my life. Anyone else would have rushed to Chicago, New York, Los Angeles or Miami, but I couldn’t,” said Jang, who had worked in other states before moving to Texas. “I sat in the corner and cried for two weeks, but I was like, ‘I’m going to have to pivot. I have to figure this out.'”
And to understand that she did – at the end of her freshman year at Keller Williams, she had closed $8 million in real estate deals and exceeded her news anchor salary. In 2021, four years after her debut, she has earned nearly $900,000 in gross revenue.
“I took my job as a newscaster, my marketing skills and took everything I had and who I was, and used it in real estate,” said Jang. “I’ve built my career as a journalist on relationships, communication and integrity, and I’ve integrated all of that into my new career quite seamlessly.”
Here’s how she built a business that thrived on social media and organic marketing.
To rotate
Jang’s interest in real estate was spurred by his home buying experiences.
“I had bought and sold houses in the past, and I knew how little my real estate agent had done for me,” Jang said. “I was like, ‘I can do this better than you, and you’re not even defending me.'”
Another perk, she added, was the ability to be her own boss and set her own working hours.
In 2017, after spending about a month completing a six-part online course with the Real Estate Champions SchoolJang announced his career change on Facebook and immediately began receiving messages from old friends and high school colleagues asking if she would accept their lists. Three months later, she had three homes in her portfolio, including two luxury homes over $750,000.
Jang worked 80 hours a week for the first six months.
“I remember crying after a few weeks of sheer exhaustion,” she said. “I knew my business was solely dependent on me finding a way to market myself differently and on a bigger platform when there were tens of thousands of other real estate agents out there.”
Today, Jang has found a better work-life balance and has outsourced several aspects of his business, including hiring a deal coordinator to handle the paperwork and a full-time licensed assistant to help with various tasks. .
Use social media and television to attract customers
Jang said her unique approach to selling has helped her build a business entirely from referrals and organic searches from sellers, buyers, investors, renters and other real estate agents. For her clients, Jang provides videos, home staging and Instagram exposure on her accountwhich has 35,000 subscribers.
“I’ve never made a single cold call and never knocked on any doors. My business is 70% referral from day one and 30% social media,” she said. . “My TV background gave me an organic platform of people who felt they knew me, trusted me, and wanted to work with me.”
On social media, Jang goes through many beautiful and shiny features of a home, but also points out educational content that potential buyers will want to pay attention to, such as ceilings that have already had repairs, corners of walls that give clues to the condition of a house’s foundation and other elements indicating the structural integrity of a house.
Jang also shares on social media what she does off the clock, such as her travels abroad and her food. She said this was underappreciated among estate agents, especially when they wanted to work with luxury clients, many of whom likely want information about great restaurants and travel destinations.
“It shows people all layers of who I am, how I travel, what my hobbies are, and what real estate is like in other parts of the world,” she said. “People work with people they love and feel most connected to.”
Jang was also able to use her broadcasting background to her advantage, first with a local segment called “Lily’s List” on KPRC, then, after being canceled due to Hurricane Harvey, a 30-minute real estate show called “House 2 House with Lily Jang,” where she features home listings as well as interviews with lenders, builders, interior designers, and other real estate professionals.
Jang’s connections and experience in the broadcasting world helped her connect with Jerry Martin, the now-retired managing director of KPRC. He brainstormed various real estate show ideas with Jang before landing on the concept of “Lily’s List” after Jang showed him a video sample of what she had in mind.
“I believe I did three deals in the six months we were on the air,” she said. “‘Lily’s List’ was just as important as social media for me to reach potential customers.”
Selling homes in today’s market
While fluctuating interest rates And slowdown in demand might make other realtors nervous, Jang isn’t too concerned about the change of pace. She said that while inventory is low, she still sees multiple offers on homes with key features, such as large neighborhoods and the right price. Jang’s advice to those buying in Houston is to always buy a zoned home from reputable, well-rated schools.
As for her confidence in her performance in a tighter and more competitive market, Jang said she was happy to turn a page on the craziness that 2021 and the start of 2022 have brought. She said there was an influx of “tens of thousands of new” real estate agents who benefited from historically low interest rates, which made real estate transactions faster, easier and more profitable, but times are now much more difficult.
“When the market changes like this and normalizes, there’s a systemic exodus of agents because not all agents are making the sales they’re used to for a living,” she said. “Real estate agents who have benefited from a robust market are no longer producing as much.
“They have dues to pay with no closings, so our market has normalized and new agents who came into the game during the record home sales boom don’t necessarily need creative marketing skills, business planning, and marketing. ‘business and work and hustle and bustle to generate sales, and many must turn to salaried work with more security.’
Jang said she believes the real estate agents who will be successful are those who are fully invested and integrated into the field, as opposed to those who have “no pulse in the market every day.”